Retirement Plan

by Martha Miller

  Amanda and Celia nodded in unison. Amanda had printed Jon Woods’s photo, which she passed around the room.

  The women discussed it that night and agreed to meet again, then took the problem home to their husbands. More than one man wanted to just go to Smallwood’s home and beat him into a decision to move. But at a second meeting Wallace Jenkins, a private-practice attorney, suggested that the group buy Smallwood out. He said that other neighborhoods had done it successfully.

  “Surely living here without registering is illegal,” Celia said. “We could turn him in to the police.”

  Jenkins said, “He’d get a slap on the wrist. The police might even talk to him. But they aren’t equipped to watch him day and night. They’ll arrest him only after he’s done something to harm one of our children. These guys are slippery. Our kids might not even tell us. Some children grow up and never talk about it.”

  “But he’s hanging around the school and the playground,” Celia said. “I’ve seen him. I’m pretty sure that’s some kind of violation for a convicted sexual predator.”

  Wallace Jenkins cleared his throat. “Even if they took him in, we’d still have a problem when he got out. And what if he decided to retaliate? Handling this ourselves has advantages.”

  Amanda asked, “How do we get the money?”

  “A mortgage,” Jenkins answered. “We’d need to put a few bucks together for the down payment. But we could resell the house when Smallwood’s out and then pay everyone back.”

  “Why would he sell?” Amanda asked. “Should we do something to make him want to?”

  “We’ll probably have to offer a little more than he paid for the place,” Jenkins said. “He’s done some work on it. We could go in and paint it and fix it up a little more. Even in this market, we should be able to break even.”

  Amanda sighed. “But what if he doesn’t want to cooperate?”

  Jenkins shrugged. “We’ll start there. If he refuses, we could do a few things to encourage him.”

  Eight families were there that night, counting Amanda and Celia. Each of the couples committed to $2,000. Amanda said she’d be hard-pressed to come up with $500, but Celia had plenty of money from Jack’s life insurance. No one expected her to put in more than the others, but she made it clear she was willing to if they needed it.

  Wallace Jenkins’s firm approached Jason Smallwood about the sale two weeks later. When Smallwood refused the offer, Jenkins countered with a larger offer. On the third offer, Smallwood would have netted $40,000 on the house. A nice profit. Smallwood turned the offer down.

  Then, on October 15, everything changed.

  *

  Merris Constance Morning left soccer practice alone. The days were getting shorter, and on this day she had to walk the six blocks to her home. Her mother had arranged for her to ride with the Reavy boys, but Mrs. Reavy must have forgotten, because right after she changed her shoes, Merris watched the blue minivan pull away from the curb without her. She ran across the field waving, but the van kept going. She could have asked someone else for a ride, but she really did want to walk. She wanted to stop at the Mini-Mart on Wheeler and buy a forty-nine cent Mountain Dew with the change left from her allowance. Her mother wouldn’t let her have soda with sugar at home, so when she could, she snuck to the gas station and bought her own.

  Their neighbor pulled up to the curb at the first cross street. “Hi, Merris, you want a ride home?”

  She looked at him and wrinkled her brows. How did he know her name? She shook her head, and when the walk light came on, she crossed the street. But when she came out of the Mini-Mart his car was waiting. He seemed to be holding something in his lap.

  “Come on, Merris. I have the puppy with me. Would you like to hold him?”

  Her heart raced. This was it. This was what adults meant when they told her not to talk to strangers. Except this guy wasn’t a stranger. She saw him all the time at home and in the park. But something in his voice didn’t sound right. Without speaking she crossed the parking lot and went down Franklin Street against the one-way traffic. She was getting a little farther from home, but she was sure this was safer. She saw him coming again. He hadn’t seen her yet.

  She stepped into a shady entryway and stood for a moment with her back flat against the door of a building. His car passed by. When she felt safe enough, she turned around and discovered she was standing against the door to the Security Bank. An old woman came toward her and smiled. When the woman went in, Merris followed. She was scared, but she had a plan. She would use the phone and call her mother. Except for the old lady and two tellers, the place seemed empty. When Merris looked back through the front window she saw his car again, moving slowly along the right lane.

  She crossed the lobby and squeezed into a corner where three tall plants obscured the view from the window.

  *

  The kitchen smelled of coffee, bacon, and gun oil. Lois sat at the table with her second cup of the day, the M-16 in pieces on the red-checkered oilcloth. Dust motes floated in the rays of the sunlight that slanted through the back window.

  The doorbell sounded. Then Sophie stood beneath the kitchen archway. “You expecting someone?”

  Lois shook her head and the bell sounded again.

  Sophie disappeared and then Lois heard her say, just a bit too loud, “Myrtle, what a nice surprise. Come on in.”

  Lois stood, tossing a couple of kitchen towels over the disassembled rifle.

  Myrtle wore red pants and a black T-shirt with sequins. As she turned toward Lois, the white roots in her black hair evidenced a little neglect. Lois smiled and managed to also say, “What a nice surprise.”

  “I just come from church. I said to myself, if Sophie’s still under the weather, I should stop and see if there’s any help I can be.”

  Sophie’s accident had been three months before. She wasn’t even wearing the cervical collar now. “How nice,” Sophie said.

  For the first time Lois noticed that Myrtle was holding something out to her. “I brought one of my cinnamon-and-pecan coffee cakes. You know how everybody likes them. What’s that smell?”

  “Oh, Lois has taken the weed-eater motor apart again,” Sophie said. “Sit down. I’ll get some paper plates and we can eat and talk in here.”

  “I should wash my hands,” Lois stammered. And the two of them went into the kitchen, leaving Myrtle sitting on the davenport.

  They worked quietly. Lois washed her hands and got forks, napkins, and paper plates, while Sophie poured what was left of the morning’s coffee into a carafe and started a new pot. Lois carried everything into the living room and quickly returned.

  “What else?”

  Sophie pointed to the cake knife and three coffee mugs.

  “I hope you girls are hungry.” Myrtle quartered the cake and lifted sections onto three paper plates.

  Lois met Sophie’s eyes, then she shrugged and picked up a fork.

  “Isn’t this nice,” Myrtle said.

  “So,” Sophie said. “How have you been?”

  “Never mind me, how have you been?”

  “I’m feeling better, thank you.” Sophie sat her plate on the coffee table and said, “What’s going on, Myrtle?”

  Lois shoved a bite of cake into her mouth and wished Sophie had kept her mouth shut.

  Myrtle let out a wail and burst into tears.

  Sophie scanned the room for the box of tissues, while Lois forked another bite of cake.

  “Lois,” Sophie said. “Where are the Puffs?”

  Staring at Myrtle, Lois reached under the edge of the couch and pulled out a nearly empty box of tissues.

  Myrtle grabbed one and blew her nose. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s come over me. The church service was so nice, and then Cara and Connie announced their commitment ceremony. I got to thinking about how they’ve only been together for six months, and Liz and I were together eighteen years, and now I’m alone.” Myrtle hiccupped. “B-because of a younger woman with fak
e tits.”

  Lois ate. The tears unnerved her.

  Sophie put Myrtle’s coffee mug into her hands. “Take a sip of this, honey.”

  “You know how hard it is for a woman my age to find someone?” Myrtle sobbed. “Doctor put me on a diet for my blood pressure, but I don’t lose weight. I get meaner than hell. Try to find a woman when you have murder in your eye.”

  Lois said. “You don’t want this last piece of cake then?”

  Sophie stared at Lois.

  “What?” Lois said. “It’s good.”

  Myrtle waved a tissue and said, “Go ahead and eat it. I got four more at home.”

  The room was quiet for a moment, the silence broken only by Myrtle’s sniffles. Sophie picked up her cake and took a bite. Then her face lit up. “Have you tried the Internet?”

  Myrtle shrugged. “It’s hopeless.”

  “I don’t think so. You could probably find a lot of women our age who are lonely.”

  “I’d just end up with an old man who needs a woman to cook and clean for him.”

  “Myrtle,” Sophie said. “There are lesbian dating sites.”

  Lois looked at Sophie. How the hell did she know that?

  Sophie went on. “You could get your roots colored and gussy up, and I could take a picture and help you fill out the application.”

  “You know how to do that?” Myrtle asked.

  “How hard could it be? Come on. The computer is in our bedroom—let’s take a look.” Sophie glanced at Lois. “Honey, could you clean up this mess while we shop for a site?”

  Lois nodded and waved them on, glad to be out of the center of the boo-hooing. When they were safely out of sight, she went back into the kitchen to put the M-16 together to get it off the kitchen table. Myrtle was laughing at the other end of the hall as she went to work.

  Through the back window and a chain-link fence, Lois could see Daisy, the neighbor’s dog, lying near her weather-beaten doghouse. The day would be warm, so Lois would take the old Lab some water before her owner dragged his drunken ass out of bed. For the present, she tried to focus on assembling the rifle. Earlier she’d noticed a small burr on the spring. She wouldn’t be able to use the weapon again until she replaced it.

  Lois snapped the parts in place the way Gunnery Sergeant Newmar had taught her. She’d fired her first assault rifle and loved her first woman in Vietnam. But thoughts of Vietnam always led to thoughts of Ruby and the Tet Offensive.

  She’d been stationed in a hospital near a small village on the edge of Saigon in 1968. A South Vietnamese girl who looked like she was twelve years old came to the hospital with heavy vaginal bleeding and a belly that appeared to hold a full-term pregnancy. Though the battle had started in February, the sounds of artillery were still fairly constant. Orders had been given to move the hospital, so Lois and a South Vietnamese nurse, Nghuy Tran, were the only ones there. They were waiting for the last six patients to be evacuated, and then they would join the rest of the medical unit. Lois listened as Nghuy questioned the girl, understanding only an intermittent word. When Lois examined the mother-to-be, she found she’d lost a lot of blood.

  “A C-section is risky,” she told Nghuy. “She’s placenta previa. She and the baby’ll die if we don’t do something.”

  Without further discussion, they began to prepare for surgery. Only moments had passed before Nghuy made the incision. The girl didn’t handle the anesthetic well; her blood pressure dropped.

  Even all these years later, Lois remembered the events vividly. The infant was tiny—probably less than four pounds, though they had no scale. Her cries sounded weak and far away. By the time Lois turned back to the table, the patient was dead. They tried to work on her, but the medical unit had taken most of the big equipment. Lois closed the girl’s empty brown eyes and covered her face with the cleanest thing she could find, a somewhat bloody towel. Nghuy Tran arranged with locals for burial. No one claimed to know the dead girl.

  Their first mistake was naming the little brown baby. They’d called her Ruby for a nurse who’d died in the first days of Tet, the med unit’s only casualty so far. That evening Nghuy Tran found a scrawny goat outside an abandoned hut, and they’d fed the infant from a makeshift bottle. Lois had been sure they’d lose Ruby eventually, but she thrived.

  When Lois prepared to rejoin her unit, she asked Nghuy Tran to take the child and find her a good home. Nghuy’s response surprised her.

  “Like a stray dog, you mean? In a country where orphans starve and die on the streets, you want me to find this one a home?” Nghuy’s English was hard to understand when she was angry, but Lois caught her meaning. Nghuy said, “I thought you would take her. We should have let her die.”

  Lois asked, “What should I do with her?”

  Nghuy Tran turned her back and walked away. At the entrance of the tent she hesitated, looked over her shoulder, and said, “She is your daughter now. Take her with you or kill her today, before the others know about her.”

  Lois had been twenty-one and in Vietnam for fifteen months. Men were pulling long stretches back then. Most of the guys who went home before their time was up traveled in a body bag. With a sinking feeling, Lois gazed at the baby sleeping in a cardboard box that once had held two-dozen bottles of Ringer’s lactate. Ruby was wrapped in a camouflage T-shirt that some soldier wouldn’t need again.

  Of course a Vietnamese mother wouldn’t take her. They struggled to feed the children they had. Most South Vietnamese women had lost a father, brother, son, or husband. Women lined the backstreets of Saigon begging and selling themselves. Lois had known all that on some level, but she hadn’t connected it to the situation with Ruby until that minute.

  The tent was hot. Through the open flap, Lois could see that rain threatened. Boxes sat all around her. She and Nghuy Tran had packed early that morning after the wounded were loaded into a helicopter. Nghuy wouldn’t move with the unit. She had a grandmother and a sister in Saigon to care for. Only women cared for women in Vietnam. After a moment, Lois heard the soft beat of raindrops on the tent. Then Nghuy Tran was beside her.

  “We got to load up—the truck is here.”

  “What about Ruby?”

  Nghuy met her eyes and said softly, “Leave me a little morphine. She will feel nothing. It’s a better death than most children in this country get.”

  Lois stared at the sleeping child for a long time and finally said, “I can’t.”

  “Then take her with you.”

  And that was that. She didn’t know how to care for the child or even if that would be possible, considering the long hours she often worked. But she set the Ringer’s box in the seat of the truck, and while the marines dismantled the tent, she helped Nghuy Tran arrange boxes on the truck bed and make room for the frightened goat. When the truck was loaded and Lois had squeezed into the cab with the box in her lap, Nghuy stepped up onto the running board, and through the open window she said, “You give Ruby a good life in America, yes?”

  At that moment the sky opened up and rain ran down Nghuy Tran’s face in rivers. With sudden clarity, Lois realized she would never see this woman again. She nodded. “I’ll do my best.” Then she touched Nghuy’s shoulder and said, “Good-bye, old friend.”

  Nghuy looked in the box one last time. The baby was awake, but quiet. The woman gave Lois an uncertain smile and said, “Good-bye, Lois Burnett.” Then the truck began to roll. Nghuy jumped down from the running board and stepped back. Lois adjusted the rearview mirror and watched the tiny woman, standing unfazed by the tropical downpour, until she was out of sight.

  As it turned out, six months later, Ruby and Lois were among the few survivors when artillery hit the hospital. Lois got her ticket home; the price was two pieces of shrapnel—one in her left thigh and the other (the one that was still there) in her lower back. Getting Ruby out of Vietnam turned out to be easier than getting her into the States. But in those days, it wasn’t uncommon for a G.I. to bring a child home—often his own child.
>
  Myrtle’s voice startled her. “What you got there?”

  Lois looked at what she had there. How could she hide it now? Hadn’t Myrtle been in the bedroom on the computer? Lois stammered, “It’s an old rifle we’re planning to sell on eBay.” Lois didn’t know what eBay was, but she’d heard others in the pinochle group talk about it.

  Myrtle said, “Would you be willing to post my gun?”

  “Your gun?”

  “The ex left it. Thirty-eight revolver. That’s how she planned on starting our retirement plan.”

  Lois chuckled. “Could you shoot somebody?”

  Myrtle considered this. “I sure could if it was that or live in the streets. I might even be able to shoot the next woman that leaves me for an ex-Playboy Bunny in the kneecap.”

  “You’re a cold woman, Myrtle Dixon,” Lois said.

  Myrtle’s face lit up.

  Then Sophie put a hand on Myrtle’s shoulder and guided her toward the door.

  When Sophie returned, Lois asked, “You find anything for her?”

  “Actually, there are a couple of lesbian dating sites for seniors.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  Sophie shook her head. “I am not.”

  “I’ll be damned.”

  “Why were you working on that thing with Myrtle in the house?”

  “I thought you’d be busy for ten or fifteen minutes,” Lois said.

  “We were on the computer for close to an hour.”

  “Oh.”

  Brushing aside the topic of Myrtle, Sophie said, “I just put the ad up on a Web site called Dirty Work for Hire this morning, and we have a customer already.” She laid a piece of printer paper on the table. It was an e-mail.

  Lois quickly snapped the rifle back together. “Who?”

  “That’s the trouble. On the Internet you never really know for sure.”

  “Could be undercover police or that 60 Minutes guy who busts into your kitchen with cameras.”

  Sophie shrugged. “I suppose so. I figure we should charge a lot on this deal and put some money away against the day we get arrested—if we ever do.”